WXDU's MissionWXDU, as a member of the Duke University Union, exists to inform, educate, and entertain both the students of Duke University and the surrounding community of Durham through quality progressive alternative radio programming. WXDU seeks to give its staff the freedom to pursue their personal aesthetic within the framework of a cohesive format. WXDU aims to provide the listener with an alternative viewpoint untainted by commercial interests. WXDU resolves to maintain good relations with the music industry without compromising its integrity and nationally recognized commitment to quality programming. WXDU resolves to remain a laboratory where all members are free to make and learn from their mistakes.

Strayhorn composition. Originally recorded in 1941, this quickly became the "theme song" for the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Charlie Christian (with Benny Goodman and His Orchestra)

Solo Flight

Progressions: 100 Years of Jazz Guitar

Sony BMG, 2005

1941 instrumental song by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra. On the Columbia label, the song featured Christian and was released in 1944. It went to No. 16 on the Pop Charts and was No. 1 on the Harlem Hit Parade.

George Shearing

In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

Ballad Essentials

Concord Records, 2001

David Mann composition, 1955. Introduced as the title song for Frank Sinatra's 1955 album, In the Wee Small Hours (with lyrics, then by Bob Hilliard).

Sonny Rollins

The Bridge

The Bridge

BMG, 2000, 1962

Rollins composition. The "backstory" behind "The Bridge" is well-known to jazz fans: Rollins, not yet 30 years old, is feeling pressured by his sudden rise to jazz fame; so, to the mystification of many, decides to take a break. He spends the nearly three years away practicing even more, working on his craft. But since he lives on Manhattan's Lower East Side and has no private place to practice, he starts taking his saxophone to the Williamsburg Bridge to practice alone. George Avakina's liner notes to the original album illustrate that by 1962, the story of Rollins' solo bridge practice sessions had already become near-iconic to jazz fans. The scene was depicted "in a thinly-disguised work of fiction by Ralph Berton in the July 1961 issue of Metronome, about a jazz fan who heard, as he walked one lonely night across the Brooklyn Bridge, the sound of a lonely saxophone--and found that it was no dream fantasy, but a musician who had chosen the unfrequented pedestrian walkway high the above the motor traffic to peacefully commune with himself and his work. That the supposed fictional encounter actually took place [albeit on the Williamsburg Bridge and not the Brooklyn Bridge] was quickly guessed by Sonny's friends and fans, for not only were there many clues dropped in Berton's story, but the whole idea of this kind of woodshedding pointed to the serious, thoughtful, and slightly mystic Sonny. The proximity of Sonny's apartment to the Bridge also lent credence to this theory." When three years later, Rollins returned to performing, the name of his first album, including its title composition, was a nod to the place of those solo practice sessions and, possibly, also an embracing of the whole "backstory" and its many meanings. Further illustration of the story being a part of jazz lore: In The Simpsons, episode 12 season 5, the jazz musician "Bleeding Gums Murphy" makes his appearance playing his saxophone on a bridge in the middle of the night.

Song is usually credited to Peter Chatman (aka "Memphis Slim") and was first released in 1949; often associated with Williams and B. B. King. This version spent 20 weeks on the R&B Chart, where it reached No. 2.

Hoagy Carmichael composition, 1927. (Lyrics added in 1929 by Mitchell Parish.) One of the most recorded songs of the 20th century. In 2004, Carmichael's original 1927 recording of the song was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.